


Je m'abandonne à ce brillant espace

by breathechoes (bluedreaming), daisyillusive (bluedreaming)



Series: Team Pilot (Round 9 May - 1 September 2017) [1]
Category: Red Velvet (K-pop Band), 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Embedded Images, Gen, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-11
Updated: 2017-05-11
Packaged: 2018-10-30 19:34:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10883499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluedreaming/pseuds/breathechoes, https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluedreaming/pseuds/daisyillusive
Summary: The water beckons but it's too cold yet for wading. Wendy is tempted anyway.





	1. [Hand-written original text]

**Author's Note:**

> _Additional warnings: Allusions to a traumatic incident that happened in the past, resulting in unspecified character death (not of main characters)._   
> 
> 
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> 
> 。。。
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> This was inspired by The Neighbourhood's [Sweater Weather](https://open.spotify.com/track/2QjOHCTQ1Jl3zawyYOpxh6), which I'd earmarked to use for a Wendy & Rap Monster fic for a long time already. Somehow along the way though, it got mixed up with the Polish video game [Kholat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kholat_\(video_game\)), (specifically Ragnar Rox's [atmospheric review](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Djt2LczD7s)), which is in turn based off the [Dyatlov Pass incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyatlov_Pass_incident) which happened in 1959. The title is from the poem [Le cimetière marin](http://unix.cc.wmich.edu/~cooneys/poems/fr/valery.daylewis.html) by Paul Valéry.  
> 
> 
> 。。。
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> _Note: I'm not sure why I decided to use the name "Wendy" rather than Seungwan, but since this was written out entirely by hand I just kept going._


	2. [Full digital text]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I usually try to write three morning pages each day, but with the advent of this story (that was supposed to be for my most recent turn, words from [here](http://writetomyheart.livejournal.com/662435.html), this got delayed, and then I got side-tracked mid way and ended up writing three full pages instead of three sides of paper.
> 
> _This is exactly the same as the hand-written version except for a few minor spelling corrections._

 

 _Je m'abandonne à ce brillant espace,_  
 _Sur les maisons des morts mon ombre passe_ [1]

 

“[...] move—the [...] is [...] don’t [...]—”

Her eyes fly open to a tent flap opening on the only light, the sky is the wrong colour of—

—nothing moves and yet everything explodes and then there’s nothing at all.

 

。。。

 

Her eyes fly open, heart pounding in her mouth, the red of a sky that’s not here superimposed over the grey cast of the sky before she blinks—dark—light and the grey dawn is here again. Gravity is heavy, here on earth.

“Hey,” a voice says from the shifting shadows of the doorway. Wendy’s heart is still flip-flopping in her chest, too tired after beating itself against the cage of her ribs.

“Hey yourself,” she says back, doesn’t press her hand to her pounding chest, fingers gathering the crumpled bedsheets instead, but Namjoon’s gaze flickers—there and back, too quick to call out—anyway. He lifts a mug of something to his mouth, face blurring with the steam. Coffee, by the smell. Wendy feels her stomach flip flop.

Sometimes her stomach still feels empty, waking up the next morning only to find out that was weeks ago. Waking up with the memory of warm coffee, conversation, and that strange flicker of red—

Something bumps her cold fingers, something warm. Wendy blinks her eyes open again—why did she close them?—to find the steaming coffee cup nudging her fingers, Namjoon perched at the edge of the bed. Not too close, she notices again with a kind of fragile thankfulness that she can’t yet express. The porcelain is warm on her fingertips, and it doesn’t matter.

 

。。。

 

The grey of the sky is streaked with pink when she looks down and realizes that her cup is empty. It’s probably time for breakfast, but instead of looking for something to wear, Wendy pulls on an old fraying sweater and wanders over the window. The tips of her fingers against the glass are cool, and the waves break in foam against the rock and sand.

The water beckons, but it’s too cold yet for wading. Wendy is tempted anyway. The glass door sticks a little as she pushes it open, too much salt has built up since it was last opened, but the protest is minor. Outside, the sharp dawn breeze plucks at her skin. It’s too cold, really, bare feet stepping on damp rocks, the sand between sticking to her toes, but she takes a deep breath and lets the wind tug her air loose.

When she closes her eyes, instead of that blank space where so many days should be, she can taste the salt on her lips. Walking against the wind, her toes dip into the icy waves before she realizes it. The wave draws back, the cold air warmer now against her skin.

“I thought I’d gotten rid of that sweater,” a voice says, not behind her but off to the side a ways away. Wendy opens her eyes to see Namjoon poking at the foam of the waves with a long piece of driftwood.

She shrugs. “I like it.” She could offer explanations, explain how all the holes, all the memories make it real in an extra-tangible way that’s reassuring sometimes, but she doesn’t have to.

Namjoon just nods, as though he’s heard all the thoughts whirling through her head. Perhaps he has.

A seagull cries overhead and Wendy jumps a little, frowning at her overreaction. Her attention is pulled back, away from her internal self-flagellation as Namjoon gestures along the shore.

“I’m going to go look for some more driftwood,” he says, as though he’d always planned an impromptu chilly morning walk before breakfast. Wendy nods, watching him pick his way along the sand and rock, skirting hollows of water.

Every once in awhile, he pauses to rub his hands together, blowing warm breath over reddened fingers, and Wendy realizes for the first time that she’s cold. Her feet, half buried in sand, are turning blue.

Instead of heading back towards the house though, she follows the footprints pressed into the sand, the hollows already pooling with water.

“What do you think of this one?” Namjoon calls over his shoulder, and Wendy steps around to look at the new piece of driftwood he’s found. It’s a tangle of dark lines, a strangely geometrical pattern that must have happened when softer areas of wood were worn away by the water, leaving a network of interconnecting knots in the grain.

Something about it feels familiar, cold even, and she shivers.

“It’s pretty interested resting,” she offers, noncommittally, but Namjoon purses his lips in thought and shakes his head.

“No, you’re right,” he says, agreeing with an opinion she doesn’t need to voice.

 

。。。

 

“Your feet are blue,” Namjoon says after awhile, it might be minutes, it might be days. She still has those lost days hovering on the surface of her mind, the things she can’t access no matter what she does. Not for lack of trying, not for lack of others asking, through inquiries, investigations, reporters disguising themselves and trying to startle her into answering. She still has nothing. Wendy looks down to see that her feet are blue, and nods.

It feels a little like walking in lower gravity, nothing connecting her to the ground. Beside her, Namjoon is still walking. His feet are bare too, and equally blue. Namjoon, who doesn’t ask any questions at all.

Wendy opens her mouth, but instead of saying something about the cold, or their feet, or even what she wants for breakfast, other words somehow come out instead.

“I used to hate the beach,” she says, then pauses, surprised at her own words. A particularly sharp gust of window whips her loose hair across her face and blocks the sky for a breath of darkness. The silence seems to drink up her words, buffered by the backdrop of the ocean’s roar. Wendy takes one step, and then another.

“Someone asked me once if I could take it all back, the expedition, the project, the research, everything that happened.” She still can’t remember who had asked, not a hole in her memory, with those she is all too intimately familiar, but rather something unimportant. It was the question that had struck her, that still lingers in her mouth. Sour. Sweet.

“I think they expected me to say yes,” she says, not looking at Namjoon for his reaction, not looking at anything at all.

One step at a time.

“I don’t remember what I answered, and maybe it doesn’t matter.” She pauses, feet sinking down into the sand, giving her weight again. “I don’t,” she says, realizing as she says the words that maybe this is what she’s been afraid of all along, not the hole in her memory, the lost time, all the death.

“I don’t regret it,” she says, because she would do it all again. Of course, if she’d known the outcome, she would have tried to prevent it, work against it as much as you can try to work against something that’s still a mystery, but she didn’t set out planning for what happened to happen, none of them did, and what they found out was important. Even if what they found out was mostly just how much they still don’t know.

The silence swells around them again, as she takes one step and then another, and starts walking along the beach again, this time heading home.

“Can I hold your hand?” Namjoon asks a few strides further up the sand, and Wendy takes in his impassive expression, tempered by a smile hovering in the corners of his mouth.

“Your fingers are blue, too,” he explains, gesturing towards her hands. She glances down and realizes that they are, and that she’s suddenly freezing.

“Race you up the beach?” She doesn’t wait for an answer, just grabs his hand and takes off.

 

 _[04.04.2017-11.05.2017]_   
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1 Paul Valéry, [Le cimetière marin](http://unix.cc.wmich.edu/~cooneys/poems/fr/valery.daylewis.html) [ return to text ]

**Author's Note:**

> The last sentence of this fic is as follows:  
>  _She doesn't wait for an answer, just grabs his hand and takes off._


End file.
